Udta Punjab and laying cables for the red-light area of Indian cinema
The Shyam Benegal committee on Cinematograph Act/ rules, in an interim report, has suggested a new category for films with excessive adult content.
Benegal has said: "We do not want to deny filmmakers the right to screen their movies. When you do that, the movies go underground."
Films certified as "Adult with caution" or A/C will not be screened in residential areas. In effect, if enacted, this creates a whole new category of cinema: cinema in exile in its homeland.
On the surface, this seems to impose grossly unfair restrictions. On the viewer that is, not the filmmaker. To use an analogy from drug peddling or prostitution, this penalises the end user or consumer, not the dealer or pimp.
The director of Udta Punjab, for instance, will continue to live in Bombay, but the viewer of the film will be banished to a leper's colony to watch it. It is she who will be reduced to an outcast.
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| Shyam Benegal. |
The report proposes that A/C films be screened in non-residential neighbourhoods like red-light areas. The fact that sex workers live in such neighbourhoods with their families obviously does not count.
The sex worker and her children have seen so much of cutting-edge life, that they will be able to handle cutting-edge cinema, I suppose.
Mull over the proposal though and it seems not as preposterous as made out to be. Let's explore our options, in non-residential areas naturally.
For one, this will force those of us who are not frequent visitors to red-light areas, to do so. This will make us aware of how hard life is for those less fortunate. It will bridge the class divide.
Remember, the red-light area is just one designated zone for A/C cinema. Any place that is certified non-residential by municipal law qualifies.
When I try and think of a non-residential space, the first that comes to mind is a field. A lush green open field where, say, sugarcane grows in abundance.
It's the perfect place to build an A/C multiplex - far away from the residences of the madding crowd. To reach this field, you'll need a road.
New highways will be laid down overnight to enable city dwellers to commute to these oases of liberalism where a viewer can leisurely hop from one screen to another, taking in the dangerous works of Anurag Kashyap, Kamal Swaroop and Chandraprakash Dwivedi.
Directors of the future will tell stories along the following lines: "I was 16. I was travelling from Allahabad to Delhi on the Prayagraj Express. I can never sleep on trains. At midnight, we had just crossed Kanpur; I saw this neon dome rising out of nowhere in the badlands of Eastern Uttar Pradesh. It was an A/C theatre. It was showing a new film by Dibakar Bannerjee. I decided then and there that I simply had to watch it. I pulled the emergency chain. Gotta use it sometime! I hopped off with my rucksack and walked through the field to reach the ticket counter. I saw my first Dibakar film which left an indelible impression. I wouldn't have made my film today if it wasn't for that night. Never mind that I was stranded in the field for several days, not knowing how to get back to the city. I saw a lot of films there. I made good use of my time."
Benegal says this new category needs to be brought into existence because otherwise films go underground. Why, but we can tunnel deep and open A/C theatres under the ground beneath our feet. Save cinema from going underground by drilling.
The state can fix how deep is deep enough to be reasonably far way from a residential area. This will come as a boon to Metro workers and those in the indoor lighting business.
Instead of going down, you can also go up. Private airlines can run special A/C flights. The average flight is the length of a film - it's a match made in starry heaven.
At 7,517km, India has one of the longest coastlines in the world. One could open these forbidden A/C theatres on boats - the floating theatre.
Floating casinos already exist in Goa, the Deltin Royale being the most luxurious. The guys at Deltin will be the best people to run this - all you need is a boat anchored in the Mandovi river.
Cinemaphiles watching immoral cinema can also sample other immoral activities like gambling (the same holds true for red-light areas).
Those of an upright and active bent of mind will be able to take swimming lessons or go snorkelling or fishing in the breaks between films.
As A/C theatres become the norm, online communities will form. Like-minded people will meet each other in these theatres; A/C romances will blossom.
The online forums will discuss things like: the experience of watching Kashyap's Paanch was so different when I watched it in a field in Meerut, from watching the same film on a boat on the Mandovi, from when I watched it on GB Road.
Think about it. Benegal's proposal isn't as outrageous as it sounds. Another way of looking at it is this: we Indians love wires.
We spend most of our working days digging so that we can lay underground cables. Once that is done, we then spend the rest of our living days tripping over these cables.
(Courtesy of Mail Today.)